Saturday… 13 December 2008

April 5 2008: Competitive streak. Not to be outdone by two aides who each did a pair of pull-ups, Obama does three before stepping out to address the crowd at the University of Montana [ Callie Shell/Aurora for Time]

BALAD, Iraq (AP) — Despite a summer deadline to pull American combat troops from urban areas, thousands will stay in cities to support and train Iraqis, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said Saturday.

Even with the mandate in the recently approved U.S.-Iraq security agreement, there have been suggestions some troops would not leave urban areas.

But Gen. Raymond Odierno was the first military leader to acknowledge some forces would remain at local security stations, as training and mentoring teams.

“We believe we should still be inside those after the summer,” he said the sprawling U.S. base in Balad, north of Baghdad before welcoming Defense Secretary Robert Gates on a brief visit.

Iraq’s prime minister upbraided his top government spokesman for saying some U.S. soldiers might need to remain in the country for many more years. “What was announced about the Iraqi forces needing 10 years in order to be ready is only his personal point of view and it doesn’t represent the opinion of the Iraqi government,” Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s office said in a written statement Saturday.

It’s been clear since brigades and divisions of troops were reclassified from “combat” to “training” that we will die fully engaged, in a hail of shrapnel and fussilage, fully dressed for combat but called “trainers” and ”advisors”.

He [Odierno] added, “We don’t want to take a step backward because we’ve made so much progress here.”

“I can assure you that a change in administration does not alter our fundamental interests, especially in the Middle East.”

He said a few other things too… Not that any of it is news. I am reminded of how “managed” our presidents are. Even Eisenhower. From the version I have read, the reason he did not deliver his speech using his own preferred words, ”Military Industrial Congressional Complex” is that “senior Republican aides” removed the offending word.

The “aides” were senators and interested parties, would be my guess. And, Eisenhower, whatever one thought of him, came to the job with military experience, a general of the European campaign and VE day.

Like this:

Related

Just think about that for a minute. That kind of interference is on the level of Terry Schiavo interference. US Senators from “right to work” states with foreign auto plants trying to NEGOTIATE WAGE AND BENEFIT LEVELS with workers of private companies doing business IN OTHER STATES. That totally blows me away.

LOL ABC just said that Yeshiva U cannot even figure out how much of their endowment was tied up with Madoff. He was their Treasurer. And I am guessing they were very proud of that, for however long he suckered them.

But why isn’t the Michigan elected and the various legations from the auto industry making that point, in big bright red neon letters (right now they are busy thanking Bush Baby). And Gettlefinger is useless.. I am convinced people just tune him out. It gets mentioned in passing, as sub text.

From what I hear, too many people had transmissions and other major parts of American cars fail at under 100K miles. People moved on. Which is not to denigrate the workers in the US auto industry. But the system.

We’ve forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching “India’s 9/11.” And like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we’re expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it’s all been said and done before.

As tension in the region builds, U.S. Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that, if it didn’t act fast to arrest the “bad guys,” he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on “terrorist camps” in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India’s 9/11.

But November isn’t September, 2008 isn’t 2001, Pakistan isn’t Afghanistan, and India isn’t America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive at our own conclusions.

The Indian media, however, was transfixed by the rising tide of horror that breached the glittering barricades of “India shining” and spread its stench in the marbled lobbies and crystal ballrooms of two incredibly luxurious hotels and a small Jewish center.

We’re told that one of these hotels is an icon of the city of Mumbai. That’s absolutely true. It’s an icon of the easy, obscene injustice that ordinary Indians endure every day. On a day when the newspapers were full of moving obituaries by beautiful people about the hotel rooms they had stayed in, the gourmet restaurants they loved (ironically one was called Kandahar), and the staff who served them, a small box on the top left-hand corner in the inner pages of a national newspaper (sponsored by a pizza company, I think) said, “Hungry, kya?” (“Hungry eh?”). It, then, with the best of intentions I’m sure, informed its readers that, on the international hunger index, India ranked below Sudan and Somalia.

But of course this isn’t that war. That one’s still being fought in the Dalit bastis (settlements) of our villages; on the banks of the Narmada and the Koel Karo rivers; in the rubber estate in Chengara; in the villages of Nandigram, Singur, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Lalgarh in West Bengal; and the slums and shantytowns of our gigantic cities.

That war isn’t on TV. Yet.

Collateral Damage

When we say, “Nothing can justify terrorism,” what most of us mean is that nothing can justify the taking of human life. We say this because we respect life, because we think it’s precious.

So what are we to make of those who care nothing for life, not even their own? The truth is that we have no idea what to make of them, because we can sense that even before they’ve died, they’ve journeyed to another world where we cannot reach them.

One TV channel (India TV) broadcast a phone conversation with one of the attackers, who called himself “Imran Babar.” I cannot vouch for the veracity of the conversation, but the things he talked about were the things contained in the “terror emails” that were sent out before several other bomb attacks in India. Things we don’t want to talk about any more: the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the genocidal slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, the brutal repression in Kashmir.

“We die every day,” he replied in a strange, mechanical way. “It’s better to live one day as a lion and then die this way.” He didn’t seem to want to change the world. He just seemed to want to take it down with him.

If the men were indeed members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, why didn’t it matter to them that a large number of their victims were Muslim, or that their action was likely to result in a severe backlash against the Muslim community in India whose rights they claim to be fighting for?

Terrorism is a heartless ideology, and like most ideologies that have their eye on the Big Picture, individuals don’t figure in their calculations except as collateral damage.

It has always been a part of, and often even the aim of, terrorist strategy to exacerbate a bad situation in order to expose hidden fault lines. The blood of “martyrs” irrigates terrorism. Hindu terrorists need dead Hindus, Communist terrorists need dead proletarians, Islamist terrorists need dead Muslims. The dead become the demonstration, the proof of victimhood, which is central to the project.

Obama aides and advisers have set $600 billion over two years as “a very low-end estimate,” … The final number is expected to be significantly higher, possibly between $700 billion and $1 trillion over two years.

Interestingly the NYT seems scarcely to touch the Madoff story. Two FP lightweight articles yesterday and today if you go to t he business page… you have to scan over to the wire feed for an AP story..

LOL. So… how red are the hands and faces of the NYT board? I am just guessing….

WASHINGTON — As the financial crisis jolted the nation in September, Senator Charles E. Schumer was consumed. He traded telephone calls with bankers, then became one of the first officials to promote a Wall Street bailout. He spent hours in closed-door briefings and a weekend helping Congressional leaders nail down details of the $700 billion rescue package.

The next day, Mr. Schumer appeared at a breakfast fund-raiser in Midtown Manhattan for Senate Democrats. Addressing Henry R. Kravis, the buyout billionaire, and about 20 other finance industry executives, he warned that a bailout would be a hard sell on Capitol Hill. Then he offered some reassurance: The businessmen could count on the Democrats to help steer the nation through the financial turmoil.

“We are not going to be a bunch of crazy, anti-business liberals,” one executive said, summarizing Mr. Schumer’s remarks. “We are going to be effective, moderate advocates for sound economic policies, good responsible stewards you can trust.”

A new book, President Obama: The Path to the White House (David & Charles / TIME £9.99), showcases the photographs of Callie Shell, who began covering Obama for Time Magazine in 2006 when his travelling party numbered just three people in a van: the driver, Obama and Shell. Her photographs reveal Obama’s private, unguarded side, his repose with his family, and capture the awe and excitement his campaign generated
Picture: Callie Shell/Aurora for Time

if you’re going to expose poor behavoir within the democratic party you better order up a few dozen more lifetimes cause you’ve got a long row to hoe. from marisa’s link above.

Mr. Schumer appeared at a breakfast fund-raiser in Midtown Manhattan for Senate Democrats. Addressing Henry R. Kravis, the buyout billionaire, and about 20 other finance industry executives, he warned that a bailout would be a hard sell on Capitol Hill. Then he offered some reassurance: The businessmen could count on the Democrats to help steer the nation through the financial turmoil.

“We are not going to be a bunch of crazy, anti-business liberals,” one executive said, summarizing Mr. Schumer’s remarks. “We are going to be effective, moderate advocates for sound economic policies, good responsible stewards you can trust.”

The message clearly resonated. The next week, executives at firms represented at the breakfast sent in more than $135,000 in campaign donations.

what exactly is the difference between schumer and Gov. Blagojevich? isn’t it only a difference in degree? is it the fact schumer didn’t solicit outright? or the fact the money he was given didn’t appear within his personal bank account?

Oh this just sounds too familiar. LOL Meanwhile the days drag on, Rahm decomposes in public or in hiding, alleging death threats… and Ob cannot get whatever ”revelations” there are out there and done with. He’s letting the media tell the story. LOL.

[T]he threat of the sack is hanging over the heads of senior members of his White House team embroiled in the case of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who is under investigation for allegedly trying to sell Mr Obama’s vacated senate seat to the highest bidder.

A senior Democratic source, who is close to members of Mr Obama’s team, told The Sunday Telegraph that the President-Elect made clear early in his presidential “transition” following victory on Nov 4 that he would remove anyone, no matter how senior, if they fail to live up to his promise to change “the old politics”.

Insiders believe that the pledge – which suggested Mr Obama is sensitive about his and his senior advisers’ long association with cut-throat Chicago politics – may now be put to the test.

Pressure is growing on Mr Obama to come clean about links between his staff and Mr Blagojevich, who was caught on tape by the FBI plotting to swap campaign cash and jobs for himself and his wife for political favours. …snip…

It’s hard to keep up with the relentless drumbeat of sourly satisfying news about Obama’s appointments, actual and potential. I’m only now getting around to reflecting on the glorious possibility that Obie might actually appoint the Childgrinder of Tweed Courthouse, Joel Klein, as secretary of education.

Klein, a corporate lawyer, was put in charge of New York City’s schools by that Napoleonic poison toad Mike Bloomberg. The two of them share a religious commitment to standardized testing as the Holy Grail of education.

Of course this is also the Bush administration’s approach, embodied in No Child Left Alone — er, Behind.

In fact there’s an almost complete elite consensus viewing education as a kind of industrial operation: a child-processing facility that takes in raw material (sentimentally referred to as “children”) of various types and levels of quality, pulverizes them, sifts them, separates the fine-grained from the coarse, and packages them into citizen-units ranging in price from the deluxe to the unlabelled-generic — and by the way, generates a fairly high proportion of factory-seconds and rejects in the course of its workings.

Klein, a corporate lawyer, was put in charge of New York City’s schools by that Napoleonic poison toad Mike Bloomberg. The two of them share a religious commitment to standardized testing as the Holy Grail of education.

Yes and who else was a volunteer in that managed horror? Otherwise known as corporatised school reform….

Rahm Emanuel, President-elect Barack Obama’s pick to be White House chief of staff, had conversations with Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration about who would replace Obama in the U.S. Senate, the Tribune has learned.

The revelation does not suggest Obama’s new gatekeeper was involved in any talk of dealmaking involving the seat. But it does help fill in the gaps surrounding a question that Obama was unable or unwilling to answer this week: Did anyone on his staff have contact with Blagojevich about his choice for the Senate seat?

Blagojevich and John Harris, his former chief of staff, face federal charges in an alleged shakedown involving the vacant Senate seat, which Illinois law grants the governor sole authority to fill.

Obama said Thursday he had never spoken to Blagojevich about the Senate vacancy and was “confident that no representatives” of his had engaged in any dealmaking over the seat with the governor or his team. He also pledged Thursday that in the “next few days” he would explain what contacts his staff may have had with the governor’s office about the Senate vacancy.

Emanuel, who has long been close to both Blagojevich and Obama, has refused to respond to questions about any involvement he may have had with the Blagojevich camp over the Senate pick. A spokeswoman for Emanuel also declined to comment Friday.

One source confirmed that communications between Emanuel and the Blagojevich administration were captured on court-approved wiretaps.

“He is serving the parochial interest of a very small group of financial people, bankers, investment bankers, fund managers, private equity firms, rather than serving the general public,” said John C. Bogle, the founder and former chairman of the Vanguard Group, the giant mutual fund house. “It has hurt the American investor first and the average American taxpayer.”

In fact there’s an almost complete elite consensus viewing education as a kind of industrial operation

Yes. But we all know that Obama’s mentor on the philosophy of education is Bill Ayers. That’s what Michelle Malkin told me. And Bill Ayers reads like warmed over Emerson channeled through bad Alan Ginsberg.

I urge teachers to start with a faith that every child comes to you as a whole and multidimensional being, much like yourself. Every human being, no matter who, is a gooey biological wonder, pulsing with the breath and beat of life itself, eating, sleeping, pissing and shitting, prodded by sexual urges, evolved and evolving, shaped by genetics, twisted and gnarled by the unique experiences of living—just like you. Every human being has as well a complex set of circumstances that makes his or her life understandable and sensible, bearable or unbearable; each is unique, each walks a singular path across the earth, each has a mother and a father, each with a distinct mark to be made, each is somehow sacred. This recognition asks us to reject any action that treats anyone as an object, any gesture that thingifies other human beings. It demands that we embrace the humanity of every student—that we take their side. Easy enough to say, excruciatingly difficult to enact in the daily lives of schools.

Last year, Democrats had a fifty-one-vote majority, but majority leader Harry Reid lamented their inability to overcome the minority. “The problem we have is that we don’t have many moderate Republicans,” Reid explained. In the new Congress there will be even fewer. Elections and retirements have left the surviving GOP caucus even more extreme in its ideology. The threat of a filibuster is its lever of power.

Democrats, on the other hand, have lost their last excuse for inaction. For years, they have blamed Bush’s veto or the narrowly divided Senate for their weakness. Both are kaput. Now the Dems have the ability to step up and change the situation. But will they have the courage? Many of them like to hide behind Senate tradition, claiming it would be inappropriate to alter the rules. Nonsense. If Democrats allow the sixty-vote filibuster to survive, it is because they want to keep it as a convenient way to avoid taking responsibility.

Obama and Ayers along with others who served on the board that distributed the Annenberg Challenge Fund for Chicago (well over 100 million finally, original challenge, matching funds and more millions over that) admitted at the close in their own report that they accomplished…..
.
.
. NOTHING.

One of the standard MOs around is conservative R or Winger money that channels thru non profit orgs peopled with the Obamas and Ayers… and the money is life style retention or enhancement and is meant to accomplish…
.
.
. NOTHING.

Well I’m trying to think how you would practically tranform the public education system from one that sees “education as a kind of industrial operation” to one that respects every child as a “a gooey biological wonder, pulsing with the breath and beat of life itself, eating, sleeping, pissing and shitting, prodded by sexual urges, evolved and evolving, shaped by genetics, twisted and gnarled by the unique experiences of living”.

Even if Obama wanted to appoint someone better than Klein, who would that be?

Even if Obama wanted to appoint someone better than Klein, who would that be?

Well not like it is up to Ob. It’s up to Bloomberg and the ptb in NYC and the watchful eyes on public ed. Charlie Rose seems to like Klein a lot, I’m sure he plays well in corporate board rooms and various drawing rooms in the City.

Which (education), to be realistic, gets talked about a lot to keep in semi touch with the population that has children at the mercy of the state in public ed. But which is not much of the federal budget. Nor do they care. Much at all. They dump i ton the states and the states keep a fixed reality going by tying it to the local tax base.

I’m still goin with “Laughin Me Ass Off”
how it was sold in the Time Piece Cont’d in italics}Yeh there’s ALWAYS a Flag right in the foreground by the weightroom when horseplay and impromptu chin up contest ensues at the Gym ensues among the guys…Obama…. the gush went, ACTUALLY BESTED the younger ones…

The day after his arrest, his company’s Web site still boasted that ”in an era of faceless organizations … Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC harks back to an earlier era in the financial world: The owner’s name is on the door.”

This isn’t confirmed, yet. So take it with all the usual caveats. But we’re hearing that a third Air Force nuclear team has flunked a critical test.

The 90th Missile Wing, operating out of F.E. Warren Air Force Base, is still in the midst of its “nuclear surety inspection,” or NSI. But already, the wing has failed the test of its readiness to handle atomic arms, a source close to the test tells Danger Room. Problems with the “personal reliability program,” which ensures that only the most highly-qualified, highly-trained individuals are working anywhere near a nuclear arsenal, doomed the wing’s chances. Representatives from the 90th Missile Wing and from Air Force Space Command were not available for comment.

If confirmed, this would be the third Air Force nuclear unit to fail an inspection this year. In May, the 5th Bomb Wing at Minot Air Force Base flunked its test, when security personnel couldn’t be bothered to stop playing videogames on their cellphones. Six months later, Malmstrom Air Force Base’s the 341st Missile Wing, had problems with its weapons storage area and its personnel reliability program, which prevented the unit from passing its exam. A testing team returns in about two months, to take a fresh look at the missileers.

By the time their six-day sit-in ended on Wednesday night, the 240 laid-off workers at this previously anonymous 125,000-square-foot plant had become national symbols of worker discontent amid the layoffs sweeping the country. Civil rights workers compared them to Rosa Parks. But all the workers wanted, they said, was what they deserved under the law: 60 days of severance pay and earned vacation time.

And to their surprise, their drastic action worked. Late Wednesday, two major banks agreed to lend the company enough money to give the workers what they asked for.

“In the environment of this economic crisis, we felt we were obligated to fight for our money,” Armando Robles, a maintenance worker and president of Local 1110 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, which represented the workers, said in Spanish.

The reverberations of the workers’ victory are likely to be felt for months as plants continue to close. Bob Bruno, director of the labor studies program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, predicted organized labor would be emboldened by the workers’ success. “If you combine some palpable street anger with organizational resources in a changing political mood,” he said, “you can begin to see more of these sort of riskier, militant adventures, and they’re more likely to succeed.”

The tale of how this small band of workers came to embody the welter of emotions in the country’s economic downturn is flecked with plot turns from the deepening recession, growing anger over the Wall Street bailout and difficult business calculations. The workers were not aware, for example, that Republic’s owners had quietly set up a new company, Echo Windows LLC, incorporated on Nov. 18, according to records with the Illinois secretary of state’s office. And Echo had bought a window and door manufacturing plant in Red Oak, Iowa.

Company officials in Iowa declined to comment, but Mary Lou Friedman, the human resources manager at Echo, said in a telephone interview that the factory had 102 employees, all nonunion.

And at the last minute of negotiations, according to Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois, who helped moderate talks to resolve the standoff, and union officials, Republic’s chief executive, Richard Gillman, demanded that any new bank loan to help the employees also cover the lease of several of his cars — a 2007 BMW 350xi and a 2002 Mercedes S500 are among those registered to company addresses — as well as eight weeks of his salary, at $225,000 a year.

The demand held up the settlement, which was reached only after Mr. Gillman agreed to back down. (Mr. Gillman said Friday that he had sought the money to offset a large bonus in 2007 that he had chosen not to accept.)

In many ways, however, Republic was an unlikely setting for a worker uprising. Many workers interviewed, including some who had been at the plant for more than three decades, said they considered it a decent place to work. It was a mostly Hispanic work force, with some blacks. Some earned over $40,000 a year, including overtime, pulling them into the middle class and enabling them to set up 401(k) retirement accounts and buy modest homes.

But after Mr. Gillman took over as owner in 2006, there were several rounds of layoffs, and the number of employees fell to about 240, from more than 500.

Sounds to me like he bought the company and then drove it into the ground.

Dave ultimately dooms the crew at Free Speech Zone (save for Noom) to death by his obsession with Major Flaw. During the final chase, Dave hurls his final harpoon while yelling his now-famous revenge line:

… to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.

The harpoon becomes lodged in Flaws flesh and Dave, caught in his own harpoon’s rope and unable to free himself, is dragged into the cold oblivion of the sea with the injured Flaw.

Only Noom survives. And he procedes to tell Dave’s story in a series of diaries to which only he responds.

So, what happened to Major Flaw? Was he booted from dkos or something?

LOL No way to get it straight or keep it straight. I don’t even know who it is.. moniker or RL version. (Thankfully)

Well, in brief, if one holds an Adlerian point of view in examining the Individual’s identity, an exhaustive review of the case yields insight into za vackjob by examining the phenomena of “derbloggenposten”.. Let us begin with the first comment of Herr Flaw in 2005..

The workers were not aware, for example, that Republic’s owners had quietly set up a new company, Echo Windows LLC, incorporated on Nov. 18, according to records with the Illinois secretary of state’s office. And Echo had bought a window and door manufacturing plant in Red Oak, Iowa.

No but they had an inkling. Some interviewed in the first couple of days mentioned that they came in one am and heavy equipment ws missing overnight. Managers would nto admit it ws gone nor talk about it.

clemson’s a pro right? and he’s that naive? he BELIEVED THE SHIT, put up a post, got a friendly emai warning or twenty, and then took it down. LOL. at least he has a sense of humor and is open about egg on his face. at least he’s likeable.

one can’t take anything you read at dkos at face value. and the admin is completely untrustworthy. this isn’t news.

Marc S. Dreier knew the 45th-floor conference room of Solow Realty well. He had been in it many times as a trusted lawyer for the company’s founder.

In court last week, prosecutors said their count so far put the money missing at $380 million, most of it lost by hedge funds and other investors who had bought promissory notes that were flat-out fictions.

In recent days, Dreier L.L.P., the Park Avenue law firm that Mr. Dreier founded, has been plunged into chaos. At least $35 million in escrow that was to have been held by the firm seems to be missing, the authorities say, and nearly all of its 250 lawyers are now looking for work.

Oh just listen to the whispers…

But people there gave little thought to Mr. Dreier’s odd visit until November, when the company’s founder, Sheldon H. Solow, received a disturbing call. The caller wanted to let Mr. Solow know that Mr. Dreier had offered him the chance to buy promissory notes that had been issued by the company, people associated with the firm said.

They were fake notes, and shortly thereafter, lawyers for Solow Realty — different lawyers — were in touch with federal authorities, reporting their suspicions that Mr. Dreier might be engaged in financial fraud.

Brooklyn-born son of a bricklayer made big bet on 9 West 57th Street, today one of New York City’s best commercial addresses; building is home to several high profile hedge funds, commands rents of more than $200 a foot. Also owns luxury apartments on Upper East Side. Still waiting on approval to redevelop a parcel on Manhattan’s East River into 4 million square feet of residential, commercial and retail space. Avid art collector recently donated 2 floors of a New York City townhouse to Institute of Fine Arts of New York University.

stooge…blogmaid…95-10 promoter… and lets not even mention the fact her latext faux pas was “posting” on her blog about issues that concern women of color that she was LIFTING off other women’s spaces, claiming it as her own and collecting blog cred.

hell if i read her post, not that i will, i’m going to be googling to find out who she lifted it from.

In 1974, Teamster representative Allan Baird took the unprecedented step of approaching gay activists and Milk, the self-proclaimed “Mayor of Castro Street,” to help truckers win a boycott against Coors beer for refusing to sign a union contract. Not only did Milk participate in a movement to win over gay and lesbian bars and clientele to join the boycott, but they also won Teamster jobs for gays in exchange.

Their organizing efforts were so successful that gays and labor militants eventually slashed Coors’ sales in California from 43 percent to 14 percent, spread the boycott to 13 other states, and established links with Latino workers and organizations that endured for future battles.

A good thing to remember.. and that was 3 years before Milk won the seat on the Bd of Supes.

I am so confused. I read a comment of dfq’s at FSZ that said he was giving 24 hours notice. LOL I never bothered to closely check the engraved invite. Engraved invite via box comment (# 13, upthread).:oops:

In a scene reminiscent of the recent California initiative battle over Proposition 8 in which gay marriage rights were overturned, the audience is treated to a glimpse of a timely debate. Milk effectively challenges gay magazine magnate David Goodstein who insists on circulating fliers against the Briggs Initiative that never mention the word “gay” or explicitly argue what the battle is really about.

If only an unapologetic and openly gay civil rights movement had been organized this time around, perhaps Prop 8 would have had a similar fate.

the democratic mobbed up “leadership” of the “movement” against 8 was afraid to mention the word CHILDREN in the media.

i hope IB is restoring her eyesight staring at snowfields far off in the distance while not looking at the screen. i also hope shes not standing round under trees, and has lanterns and an oil or gas furnace!

that goes double for you too catnip.

i hate to day it but down here right now at this moment the temp is 64 degrees and im wearing shorts and a t.

In that sense, not a lot of change. There is still an elevated hierarchy of [mostly] wealthy or well compensated [mostly lawyers] minions leading the orgs. SF is quilty as hell.

It was so obvious the past summer… a campaign that did nto lecture (the worst I herd over and over came from straight white liberals, proud of the fact they endorsed SSM) but a campaign that showed gay married people, with their children or their families, mothers fathers and siblings. God knows there has been enough marital joy to photograph between 2004 and the past summer.

There also was a County Recorder over in the East Bay I thought should have been tapped if willing. 19 years recording marriages in some East Bay enclave and finally able to marry. Geesh get with the program!

I’m okay, thanks. Staying as warm as possible. As it turns out, I’m a bit stuck. I waited to see how much of the new snow the complex’s maintenance guy would clear away today and it turns out that he doesn’t do the walk or stairs – just driveways. I checked out the garage – no shovel. (She just bought this place in the spring.) So, I’ve been trying to figure out what to use to clear the drifts out there (one’s right up against the door). I may just have to meet some of the neigbours and go shovel-begging. :)

I love how people assume things will get better. Be healed. The seas will recede. Poverty will be cured.

I just heard Ob’s Saturday slobber, that Donovan the HUD scud under Bloomberg, is tapped to solve the housing crisis (HUD in DC). He is one more urban adept with Fed and State monies. I have not even bothered to look up the RE project of his, that they all point to, that used :creative financing:.

[C]arrion has been a member of the Democratic Leadership Council, which captures some of philosophy, though he and Bloomberg are situated to its left on taxes and spending. Donovan is well-liked by affordable housing advocates because he shares their goals and has worked with them, including the recently controversial Acorn, and he sounded early cautions about the subprime lending bubble; but he also prefers to work through the private housing market, not around it, and has argued that low-income home-ownership isn’t a panacea.

Obama’s choice affirms Bloomberg as a model mayor and New York as the font of an expansive urban policy, as Giuliani’s — far more conservative — New York was in the Clinton administration. It also establishes Carrion as the standard-bearer for Bloomberg’s philosophy, and a frontrunner to be elected the city’s mayor at some point in the next decade.

So.

Imprisoned journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal has been taken to the Intensive Care Unit of Schuylkill Medical Center in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, after he was removed from prison for a medical emergency without any notification to his family, friends or lawyers. Prison officials told his supporters he is in diabetic shock. We get an update f […]

Indiana is facing boycotts and fierce criticism following Gov. Mike Pence's new measure that could sanction discrimination by allowing business owners to refuse service to LGBT customers in the name of "religious freedom." Connecticut is the first state to officially boycott Indiana over the move, now San Francisco and Seattle have also impose […]

We look at the case of Frederic "Rick" Bourke, who is considered a whistleblower after he was imprisoned for exposing corruption and bribery in the oil-rich region of the Caspian Sea. Bourke is known for founding the luxury handbag company Dooney & Bourke and is a philanthropist who has invested his wealth into ventures seeking novel cures for […]

George Mitchell, the former senator and U.S. Special Envoy for Middle East Peace under President Obama, joins us to discuss the escalating U.S.-Israel standoff over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's campaign against an Iran nuclear deal and open rejection of the two-state solution. Last week, it emerged Israeli intelligence spied on the Iran talks and […]

About 40 mothers being held at an immigration detention camp in Karnes, Texas, have launched a hunger strike to protest the detainment of their children as the families await immigration…Click to Continue »

On Reality Asserts Itself, Craig and Cindy Corrie tell Paul Jay, "people find hope in the work that we're doing and in the fact that Rachel was there that day, and stood against what was happening to all of those families in the Gaza Strip"

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Monday told Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi that he would lift a hold on U.S. military aid to Cairo, but also said the United States would stop allowing Egypt to buy equipment on credit starting in fiscal year 2018.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republicans will push ahead with legislation reflecting their deep mistrust of a nuclear deal with Iran whatever the outcome of talks between Tehran and major powers in Switzerland, setting up further confrontation with President Barack Obama.

(Reuters) - Indiana's Republican Governor Mike Pence, responding to national outrage over the state's new Religious Freedom Restoration Act, said on Tuesday he will "fix" it to make clear businesses cannot use it to deny services to same-sex couples.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. House committee is seeking a private interview with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over her use of private email and a personal computer server while at the State Department, the panel said in a letter released on Tuesday.

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from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.